A Praying Life – A Review

In A Praying Life: Connecting With God in a Distracting World, Paul Miller offers us a different kind of book on prayer. This book has things that I found wonderfully encouraging and helpful. At the same time, this work is not an exhaustive work on the doctrine of prayer.

Positives

So many books on prayer offer lists of how to pray without seeming to be a part of real, modern, human life. Miller’s book does not fall into this trap. Paul Miller is about as real in his description of his prayer life as any author I have read.

Miller’s work is full of helpful stories and illustrations that help us to connect with him in his prayer life. Paul and his wife have an autistic daughter. As you might imagine, his stories of praying with his wife for the benefit of their daughter are touching and helpful to others who have experienced prayers that were answered by God in different ways than they expected.

I personally found myself encouraged by the way that miller talked about prayer in such a non-mystical way. Sometimes, in books on prayer, readers may get the impression that those who do not pray for hours at a time are missing the point of prayer. Of course, there is nothing wrong with long seasons of prayer. Yet, Miller shows how prayer can be beautiful for a Christian in the middle of the confusion of daily life.

Negatives

While I enjoyed this work, it was not the deepest handling of the issues of prayer. Miller teaches us more from his experience than from a systematic theological strategy. Miller cautions readers against being mislead by their own impressions while “listening to God,” but then does not offer a deep theological defense of how this issue is to be handled.

Conclusion

I enjoyed A Praying Life, and would certainly recommend it to Christians who are struggling with their own lives of prayer. I think many will find the ideas present in this work encouraging and helpful. While the book is not as theological as some might want, it certainly has much to recommend it.

Audio

The recording of this work that I received as a part of the reviewers program from Christian Audio.com was well done as usual.